Merger costs hit Q4 results for Tompkins Financial

Tompkins Financial Corp., parent of the Bank of Castile, Friday reported quarterly net income of $11.2 million attributable to common shareholders, up 19 percent from a year ago.

The income included, for the first time, a full quarter with recently acquired VIST Financial Corp. in southeast Pennsylvania. Tompkins closed that deal Aug. 1.

Net income of 77 cents a diluted share was affected by a greater number of shares outstanding in 2012 because of those issued to complete the VIST transaction, Tompkins reported. The company reported net income of $9.4 million, or 84 cents a diluted share, for the fourth quarter 2011.

Excluded merger-related expenses, the company posted net income of $11.6 million, or 81 cents a share, in the recent quarter. That represents a decrease of 5.8 percent from diluted operating earnings per share of 86 cents reported for the fourth quarter 2011.

Analysts had expected per-share earnings of 88 cents.

“Results for the year to date and the fourth quarter were negatively impacted by merger-related costs,” President and CEO Stephen Romaine said in a statement.

“Excluding those costs, our per-share earnings performance for the first two quarters that have included results with VIST has been among the best of any six-month period in our company’s long history.”

In addition to the Bank of Castile, the Ithaca-based company is the parent of Tompkins Financial Advisors in Perinton and Batavia-based Tompkins Insurance Agencies Inc.

The Bank of Castile ranks ninth in the Rochester market with local deposits of nearly $602 million.